International Investment Law and History: An Introduction

This chapter provides a critical introduction into the state of the art of historical approaches to international investment law. Reviewing the status quo, it traces the use of historical arguments in investor-state dispute settlement and provides an overview of the existing, historically informed scholarship in the field. The chapter then focuses on the blindspots in the historical analysis of international investment law and sketches out how a fuller and more reflective engagement with, and use of, the historical method could benefit the field. To illustrate the potential of historical approaches, the chapter then situates the different contributions to the present book. It concludes by suggesting that historical approaches to international investment law could not only enrich this specialized field of international law, but also stimulate, more generally, the interest of international legal historiography in international economic law and the economic foundations of international law.